The blues ain't just colors

The blues don’t speak to you until you’ve buried somebody, unless a woman has ripped your heart out, or until after you’ve been hungry.

s

That's because before all that... life has to happen, the whole point of the blues would be wasted on you. It's the main reason pop music exists... to mark time for slow learners.

g

The blues won't ever register with folks who always had nice clothes or were raised by both parents; the blues work for those who know the heft of a gun in their waistband and that cotton-in-your brain feeling when you wake up in a strange bedroom on a dank Sunday morning.

d

The blues also ring true for women who have to answer "where's daddy?"... who work two jobs and sometimes find that another paycheck, not love, can be a necessary reason to add a husband to struggling families.

s

The blues are real from jump street. The songs write themselves because the writer has already lived the story.  The blues hit you in the gut and often times, somewhere south of there.

g

It’s why you don’t hear the blues… the real, down home blues, Mississippi Delta Blues, much on the radio; most people think it’s too sad… exactly. Life is sad and hard… get over it; get Lightin' Hopkins, Buddy Guy or John Lee Hooker CDs.

g

     Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?

     Hey Joe, I said where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
     Alright. I'm goin down to shoot my old lady,

     you know I caught her messin' 'round with another man.

g

I like my blues in person; any more it’s one of the few music acts you can sit and listen to and appreciate, because a buncha of dumbasses won’t get up in front of you and dance, like you paid to see them.

g

No blues?… no jazz.  No blues… no rhythm and blues, no C&W; and if no blues and no jazz and no rhythm and no C&W…no rock and roll, duh. Yeah, it’s all derivative… but, the blues came first.

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Blues came straight out of the cotton fields, came out of the clandestine church services, the misery of slavery and later, sharecroppin’ and Jim Crow.

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They ain’t no blues from San Francisco… never was, never could be.

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When I was fifteen or so… long before I could easily prove things by easily confirming them on the internet, I tried to convince friends that “Little Red Rooster” wasn’t written by the Rolling Stones who had their second No. 1 with it… just like “Spoonful” didn’t belong to Cream, and that “Back Door Man” wasn’t a product of The Lizard King.

g

Naw… it was Willie Dixon my man…. You don't know Willie Dixon, you don’t know music. His words became our words... and most of us don't even know it.

g

“Dead Presidents” wasn’t birthed by some too cool, hip-hop/music video/MTV producer-writer-director…

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     Them dead presidents
     Them dead presidents
     Well I ain't broke but I'm bad bent
     Everybody loves them dead presidents

g

Pure Dixon... the only man who had the guts and the right to name his autobiography…. “I Am the Blues”; nobody protested.

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Another blues legend, Howlin’ Wolf, collaborated with Dixon for years and together they produced numerous hits at Chess Records…. “Evil”, “I Ain’t Superstitious”, and of course, “Little Red Rooster and “Spoonful.” Dixon is still the most covered bluesman in history.

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In addition to “Rooster”, the Rolling Stones also covered Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You”, among others. 

g

When the Stones toured America in ’65 (cost me all of $5 in a 1,500 seat venue in Bakersfield CA)  they appeared on the popular, but pretty awful TV show, Shindig. The only way they’d agree to the gig was if Wolf appeared as their special guest. After the Stones played, they gathered around Wolf as he performed of "How Many More Years."

g

It was the first time the blues giant appeared on national TV. Wolf never forgot the well-deserved respect the Stones’ showed him.  Dixon’s and Wolf’s songs were perfect for Cream, the Doors and the Stones’ Mick Jagger, as the young, world wide audience launched the sexual revolution as the second wave of the British Invasion. The record companies had absolutely no idea what the blues lyrics meant:

g

     I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
     I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
     Keep everything in the barnyard, upset in every way

g

Or

d

     I am a back door man
     I am a back door man
     Well the men don't know, but the little girls understand

d

Or

d

     Could fill spoons full of water,
     Save them from the desert sands.
     But a little spoon of your forty-five
     Saved you from another man

d

The blues are necessary for your soul... like when the only thing she leaves are her teeth marks in that old block of cheese, and its rainin' and it always seems like its' rainin'. Times when you're "down on that killin' floor" you got to have something more; that's the blues, man.

d

“The blues are the roots and the other music are the fruits, it’s better keeping the roots alive because it means better fruits from now on. The blues will always be, because the blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.” -- Willie Dixon

Comments

[Dan Patterson]

Listen to the opening bars of any good blues tune, "Dust My Broom" comes to mind, and try to imagine that expression coming from anything but the American experience. Nothing like it anywhere.

"...Cause they's a man down there,
Might be your man
I don't know..." (T-Bone Walker)

Dan Patterson
Arrogant Infidel

[bigwhitehat]

Friend, you need to get aquainted with Long John Hunter. You would like eachother.